Send another secret senator to the senate
If I understand all this correctly, a senator (apparently Ted Stevens, who we by now all know is a total douche) can stop legislation all by his own self by placing a mysterious voodoo known as a secret hold on said piece of legislation.
I’m not up to date on all the hooey that governs senate rules but here’s an idea: Get off our asses and elect one Libertarian senator to the senate. Have him place secret holds on all legislation. We’ll call him Mr. No. He’ll put holds on everything. Stop passing stupid laws. Stop growing the government at a rate that is faster than the economy. Stop the growth of the bureaucracy.
Maybe those free-staters can get on that.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:44 am
Good idea about the libertarian although the rest of the CongressCritters will find a way around it. Why does “secret hold” remind me of “double-secret probation?” Is this life imitating a movie (Animal House), or a movie imitating life?
August 31st, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Done it, including the name. The only problem is that he is principled enough to not do it in secret. He just votes against it.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Sorry, I missed that you said Senate, not Congress. The state party would love to kick Ron to the curb, and would never give him the cash to win the state primary for Senate.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Voting against it won’t stop it. Secret holds will.
August 31st, 2006 at 4:00 pm
I wonder if just any senator can do the Sooper Seekrit Hold, or if he needs to be a committe chair (like Stephens).
And I wouldn’t hold your breath on Stephens getting booted. He may be the king of pork, but it’s pork that benefits Alaskans, and Alaskans love them some pork when Alaskans are on the receiving end…
August 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm
tgirsch Says:
I’ve read that indeed every Senator can do the hold thing, but then again I also heard it was a “tradition” and it wasn’t in the rules. That appears not to be true, although we’ll see, as the original article on Wikipedia was first created yesterday and has not had a chance to be peer reviewed.
So if we get ourselves together and buy ourselves a senate-critter, we may just disrupt things for a bit until our guy gets himself expelled by the rest of the senate-critters.
And no, it appears that you can do the sooper seekrit hold only on bills, not motions to expel.